BRITAIN’S middle-aged boozers are drinking themselves to death with the financially-crippled NHS bearing the brunt of the burden.

Shocking research has revealed that rather than rampaging teenagers fuelling Binge Britain, it is seemingly respectable older people instead.

The research, commissioned by BBC’s Panorama, has found that 50,000 deaths of pensioners could be avoided over the next decade simply by setting minimum price for alcohol at 50p per unit.

It comes as the report found that 1.4 million older people drink too much and, in England alone last year, more pensioners were admitted to hospital for alcohol-related injuries than 16 to 24-year-olds.

In the past five years, there has been a 62 per cent rise in alcohol related admissions for the over-65s.

With the number of people over 65 expected to nearly double by 2050, experts now fear that harmful drinking by the

We might be on a cusp of an epidemic of people drinking problematically in old age

Sarah Wadd, director of the Substance Misuse and Ageing research team

nation’s Golden Oldies could worsen.

Sarah Wadd, director of the Substance Misuse and Ageing research team at the University of Bedfordshire, said:

“We might be on a cusp of an epidemic of people drinking problematically in old age.”